Behind the Bastards
Part Two: Mark Fuhrman: The Most Racist Cop, or Merely Normal Racist Cop?
04 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What was Mark Fuhrman's role in the O.J. Simpson trial?
Call zone media.
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history.
This week, we're on part two of our episodes on the recently and lamentably departed Mark Furman, who, now that we've gotten to know, you know, the mood has turned somber here in the Behind the Bastards studio, because Sophie and our guest for today, Joe Kasabian, are all overwhelmed with grief at the titanic
That we've lost, you know, that there's no longer with us the great mind, the great heart, the great law enforcement officer, Mark Furman. You know, I don't know. It almost feels pointless to go on. Why are we here? I'm really happy, though, that in death that he can be, you know, the United States newest gender neutral bathroom. That's right. That's right. Yeah.
Find out where they put him somewhere in Idaho. Yeah. The only gender neutral bathroom in Idaho. Just if you see a grave in Idaho, piss on it.
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Chapter 2: How did Mark Fuhrman's past influence his actions during the trial?
It might be Mark Furman.
It might not be. No way to know.
You got to roll those dice.
Somehow our hearts will go on and on and on. Let's talk about this shit, Robert. Talk about the OJ trial. I'm excited.
Let's talk about we love the OJ trial. Again, folks, if you want to watch the documentary starring Ross from Friends as Robert Kardashian, you know, we'll wait for you.
um but i can i can replicate the best parts just imagine ross from friends saying juice over and over again and you pretty much got the important bits you know i'm i'm really happy that ross from friends career could go so well he ends up doing brown face to play an armenian guy because surge from system of down one answers phone
I do think what is really funny to me about that is they had Cuba play OJ, Cuba Gooding Jr. And it's a weird case of like the casting doing a lot of the acting because I can believe that OJ's evil because Cuba Gooding Jr. is really evil. That's true.
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Chapter 3: What evidence did Mark Fuhrman find that linked O.J. Simpson to the crime?
It was a very like, oh, wow, a lot of the lifting's just being done by like, I know who Cuba Gooding Jr. is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They nailed it on that one. They just had no idea. Great idea.
Yeah. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Number one hits. Millions of records sold. Awards. Sold out tours. You think the Jonas Brothers are satisfied?
Chapter 4: What controversies arose from Mark Fuhrman's testimony?
Nope. It's podcast time.
We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions.
Hey Jonas is available now and their first guest is a big one.
Paul Rudd. You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can you tell you not to audition for The Office or something?
I told him. Whoa. We were filming Anchorman. Clearly, I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me, right?
Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
So let's talk about Mark Furman. By the early 1990s, Mark Furman was a veteran LAPD detective who seems to have been somewhat popular and influential among like his, at least his clique in the department.
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Chapter 5: How did the LAPD's culture affect Mark Fuhrman's career?
Mark was known for making racist and sexist jokes and for his... He's got a hobby? What kind of hobby? Do you think a guy who joined the Marines because he idolized violence and never got over not getting to go to war and then became a cop? What do you think one of his hobbies is? What do you think he collects? Ugh. Shit. Stamps? I'm going to go with stamps. Ah, no. It's military memorabilia.
Oh, God. He owns Nazi memorabilia. I was going coins.
Chapter 6: What were the implications of the Furman tapes during the trial?
I was going coins.
I know these guys. I fucking know these guys. I am a historian by trade, and every time you meet a guy, every fucking time, like, oh, I collect some military memorabilia. I'm like, it's Nazi shit, isn't it? It's always Nazi shit. It's always Nazi shit. And they'll always tell you, like you don't even have to come on to them because they're so defensive. And that's true with Mark.
Because I noted, I read like two articles that had said that, oh, he got into like collecting like military, old military uniforms and awards. And so I'd wondered, but that's all they said. Like they didn't like say anything, like accuse anything. But in his own book, when Mark's saying, and like, yeah, I liked collecting old military stuff, quote, some of which happened to be German.
Yeah.
I was like, no one even said that, Mark.
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Chapter 7: What happened to Mark Fuhrman after the O.J. Simpson trial?
No one was even asking. And you just brought it up because you knew. Because you knew what we knew. And you had to confirm it for us. That's very funny to me. That's a direct A to B. No cop is collecting like, you know what? I got really into the Imperial Japanese Navy, which to be fair is not that much of a better of a choice. But still, they're going to one thing specifically.
There's not an LAPD detective who's like, yeah, I'm just really interested actually in like the differences between the like the Austro-Hungarian military proper and then like the actual like Hungarian military and the ways in which these kind of like differing like forces within the same state clashed.
And I like to collect items that sort of embody that clash and like, no, it's always just Nazi shit. Oh, no, you misunderstand me, sir. I am simply a enthusiast of the Hanved Militaria is all. Sure, buddy.
Just me. I'm the only one in the world.
Chapter 8: How does Mark Fuhrman's story reflect on systemic issues in law enforcement?
Yeah. Yeah. So one of his favorite cartoons, because he also likes he loves to collect political cartoons, like newspaper cartoons. He's a big cartoon guy. And he has like a lot, a bunch of them displayed at his desk at any point in time. This is relevant because when the O.J.
Simpson case blows up and whether or not Mark Furman's a racist becomes an important matter for reasons we'll discuss later. People are like he always had a swastika at his desk, like a cartoon swastika, like displayed prominently, like taped and like displayed or something up, like pasted up at his his workplace. And people thought that was weird.
And so in his autobiography, Mark had to be like, that's bullshit. I didn't have a drawing of a swastika. I mean, yes, there was a swastika in a drawing, but it was from a political cartoon by an artist called Paul Conrad. And the cartoon was like a swastika rising up out of the ashes of the recently collapsed Berlin Wall.
I haven't actually been able to find this cartoon, but this is Furman's explanation for what Conrad was going for with the cartoon. Conrad was asking whether we were making a mistake by allowing a country with the power and history of Germany to be reunified. So that's why Furman was like, and that's why I liked the cartoon.
I thought it was asking a poignant question, and this is obviously what it meant. And that's why there was a swastika at my desk. I don't buy it. I don't buy it. And also, that's not what the cartoon was about. Okay. Again, because Google's so fucked up, I didn't find that cartoon.
But I did find an article that interviewed Paul Conrad about that cartoon because it came up during the Simpson trial. And the New York Times reached out to Paul Conrad and asked for comment. And Paul gave a very different explanation for what that comic meant. So, again, Mark is like, obviously, it means that, you know, maybe reunifying Germany is a mistake because of the Nazis.
Here's why Paul said it. He made that comic. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Spanish, Italian, and other European workers were sent back to their home countries to create jobs for the East Germans. Out of this came the rising up of the neo-Nazis, the skinheads, or whoever you wish to refer to them.
My statement was in protest and anger that the downing of the wall, hopefully producing freedom for all of Germany, had in fact given rise to the tortured thinking of the past. That's not the same. That's not the same statement. Yeah, he is talking about like the visible rise of the skinheads and how that like upset him and stuff. And Mark is right.
No, when the wall fell, people were just worried the Nazis were coming back. And there's just a difference between those two things. I guess it doesn't matter much in the context of the court case, but it's interesting to me. And think of the mental pathways that lead a sergeant, I guess, in the LAPD to look at that and be like, this is something that needs to be on my desk.
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